Recently, interest in the millimeter-wave spectrum at 30 GHz to 300 GHz has drastically increased. The emergence of low cost high performance Si-based technologies has opened a new perspective for system designers and service providers because it enables the development of millimeter-wave radio at the same cost structure of radios operating in the gigahertz range or less. In combination with available ultra-wide bandwidths, this makes the millimeter-wave spectrum more attractive than ever before for supporting a new class of systems and applications ranging from ultra-high speed data transmission, video distribution, portable radar, sensing, detection and imaging of all kinds.
However, taking advantage of the millimeter-wave radio spectrum requires the ability to design and manufacture low cost, high performance RF-front-ends for millimeter-wave semiconductor devices.